Read from the Prologue of Never Land: Adventures, Wonder, and One World Record in a Very Small Plane by W. Scott Olsen:

"Here is what I believe.

We have a desire for infinity.

Nature, the axiom goes, abhors a vacuum. Nature will fill any vacuum, by any means, as quickly as possible. Nature rushes to fill the empty space, compelled to find a way, any way at all, to leap toward distance. This is why I believe there is nothing in the long line of human inventions as deeply rooted in our souls as the airship. It doesn’t matter if the airship is a balloon, a kite, a glider, a zeppelin, a little Cessna 152, or the x-15. No building, no monument, no bridge, no wheel or aqueduct, no lightbulb or computer system comes even close to the spirit, the hope, the necessity, and the reach of flying. Up has always been a better direction than down. Heaven is always someplace above where we are now. To look up into a clear or cloud-filled sky and to ask “How do I get there?” is one of our ancient questions.

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Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Awaiting Orders" from Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young by Brian G. Shellum:

"When Charles Young graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1889, he hoped he had ended a difficult chapter in his life. His five-year struggle to earn his coveted diploma and receive a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army was full of challenge and triumph. He repeated his plebe year after failing mathematics and graduated two months after his classmates because he had to make up for a deficiency in engineering. While West Point was a struggle for any young man, Young had to face this ordeal in a racially charged atmosphere where most of his classmates ignored him or refused to have anything to do with him. Yet he persevered and graduated.

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Read from Chapter One, "Pronghorns on the Powder" from In Trace of TR: A Montana Hunter's Journey by Dan Aadland:

"“Hold on, horses,” she cried, but, of course, they couldn’t hear her and in any case they lacked the tools to comply. I had been aiming the Dodge down the two-track, squinting through a windshield not yet wet enough to let the wipers mop up streaks of Powder River dust, the big gooseneck trailer bouncing behind us. We were doing our best to keep up with our hosts’ pickup, trying to beat the rain that would turn this Jeep trail into the sort of gumbo that converts a macho four-wheel-drive vehicle into nothing more effective than a child’s tricycle.

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Read the beginning of "Chiromancer" from From the Hilltop by Toni Jensen:

"The redhead in the poodle skirt grabbed me up from where I hid between two giant palm fronds, dragged me to the stage, told me I was the rockabilly Indian, here to save them all. I told her I wasn’t him, was just myself. That there would be no saving, that the band wasn’t that bad, anyway.

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Read from Lamb Bright Saviors by Robert Vivian:

"When you come to a small town for the first time, far away from any other place, you have to be careful to keep the joy in till you find somewhere safe where you can let it out in secret, like maybe in a diner with an old man sitting alone and staring out the window. Every diner has one old man sitting at a booth next to the window, with what happened to him long ago buried so deep inside him it ends up in the lines of his wrinkled face.

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